God Can't Reject You Series

5 Things God Can’t Do – 4) God Can’t Reject you.

Gladstone Baptist Church – 30/1/05 pm

(Adapted from “It’s Impossible for God to Reject You” – By Mike Howerton)

Tonight we are going to be talking about the fact that it is impossible for God to reject you. Paul raises an interesting question on this topic in Romans 8:35, “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love?” If you take a look at that question you will see that at the very heart of that question is a human dilemma - Am I acceptable to God? Am I acceptable in who I am? That’s what we’re going to be talking about tonight.

All of us want to be accepted somewhere and by someone. We all have a friendships that are formed based on who accepts us in our life. We get together with people who accept us on one level or another and we form these little pacts – I’ll accept you if you accept me; I’ll look after you if you look after me. We go through life in little acceptance pacts. We crave acceptance.

Do you remember the TV show Cheers. Do you remember the tag line for that show? It was set in a bar where “Where everybody knows your name”. The world craves that kind of acceptance, where everybody knows your name, where everybody loves you and where you’re acceptable. Because of this, because we struggle for this acceptance, we have to deal with insecurity. This insecurity is heightened when we experience rejection in our lives.

We’ve all encountered rejection in one form or another. Some people experience it almost constantly and that hurts us. But I want you to grasp tonight that it’s impossible for God to reject you.

Now I need to clarify myself here before we go on. The bible teaches us that there will come a time when God rejects people. It will occur in heaven at the final judgment where Jesus identifies those who have chosen Him and those who have rejected Him. At that time, Jesus will judge people based on their decision and for those who have rejected Him, He will reject and sentence them to an eternity away from his presence – we call that place hell. Although they will cry out in distress and even plead for mercy, it will be too late for that. God will have no other choice than to reject them as judgment for their own choice. This judgment will take place after you die or after Jesus comes back – which ever comes first.

I am not talking about God’s ultimate judgment tonight – because that is more of a judgment than an out-and-out rejection. The question I want to know is whether God will accept me here and now if I want to accept Him while I am still living. Will He find me repulsive? Will He accept me regardless of what I have done? Will He unconditionally welcome me or will He put conditions on my coming to Him? That is the question that I want to pose to you tonight and the answer that I want to give you tonight is that it is impossible for God to reject you. Why? 3 reasons …

1. God LOVES YOU as you are now.

The first reason is that God loves you right now, just as you are. Rom 8:38-39 (Living) says this “For I am convinced that nothing [Underline that word in your Bible] can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The angels won’t, and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God’s love away. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, or where we are—high above the sky, or in the deepest ocean—nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when he died for us.”

There’s nothing that can separate you from God’s love. This doesn’t say that nothing can separate us from Him because we ourselves can make that choice to separate ourselves from God. What it does say, though is that nothing can separate us from God’s love.

It says as plain as day that there is nothing that can make God stop loving you. There’s no way that God will reject you because He loves you too much. He’s always loved you. Right from the beginning of time, God loved you and wanted to have a deep and intimate relationship with you. He doesn’t expect you to do anything to earn this love, His love is UNCONDITIONAL.

During the Korean war, there was a 19-year-old American guy who joined the army and he went to Korea to fight in the Korean War. While he’s there he meets a girl and dates her for awhile, gets her pregnant. Then when his tour of duty’s over he goes home, never to be heard from again. Meanwhile the young Korean girl is faced with a huge burden to bear. Dating the American soldiers was socially a taboo in itself, but now she is pregnant. When the baby – a girl – is born she has lighter skin and light wavy hair and she stands out like a sore thumb. Her family kicks her out of the house. Society rejects her. She is met with curses and insults everywhere she goes. People literally spat on the mom and the little girl. It wasn’t easy.